JJ Wetherholt is in an unusual position. A third-year finance student at West Virginia University with an interest in math who once considered going to law school, Wetherholt is leaving college early, and says his parents couldn’t be more proud.
As prestigious and lucrative as a career in law or finance can be, neither holds a candle to professional baseball, and Wetherholt is one of the leading candidates for the top pick in this year’s draft.
In addition to academic All-Big 12 and All-American honors, Wetherholt hit .373/.471/.632 with 29 homers, 56 stolen bases, and more walks than strikeouts in 143 career college games. A compact, sinewy 5-foot-10, 190-pound second baseman with great bat speed from an open, left-handed stance, he’s a lock to become WVU’s highest draft pick ever. (The record is currently 11th overall, shared by Alek Manoah in 2019 and right-hander Chris Enochs in 1997.) Read the rest of this entry »
Daniel Schneemann’s claim to fame is having played six positions in his first six MLB games — reportedly no player had done so in over 100 years — but a peculiar versatility record hasn’t been the 27-year-old infielder/outfielder’s only noteworthy accomplishment since he debuted on June 2nd. A surprise contributor to a surprisingly-stellar Cleveland Guardians club, Schneemann has slashed .297/.422/.568 with two home runs and a 182 wRC+ over 45 plate appearances.
To say that the Brigham Young University product has come out of nowhere may not be wholly accurate, but at the same time, he kind of has. A 33rd-round pick in the 2018 draft, Schneemann was an unranked prospect throughout his seven minor league seasons, and his numbers — at least prior to this year’s .294/.428/.556 with 10 home runs in Triple-A — were never anything to write home about.
Intrigued by his transformative emergence, I asked the San Diego native about the adjustments he’s made to get to where he is now.
“They were gradual,” Schneemann told me earlier this week prior to a game at Cleveland’s Progressive Field. “I started making the ones that are important to me in the offseason after 2022. I had some success in 2023 (a 102 wRC+ and 13 home runs at Triple-A Columbus), and built off of those adjustments prior to this season. I’ve seen better results this year, as well.” Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the highlights of the MLB at Rickwood Field game and broadcast, Mike Trout’s unsurprisingly slow return from knee surgery, Matt Waldron’s sustained success, the incredible Royce Lewis, the challenge system’s continued ascendance over full ABS, Barry Bonds as a baseball ambassador, Elly De La Cruz’s stolen-base slump, the Yankees-Orioles AL East race, Michael Jordan and subjective stats, Buck Showalter’s scouting criteria at the MLB Draft Combine, and Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge as MVP candidates.
It’s been five weeks since Major League Baseball unveiled its first trove of bat tracking data. In that time, we’ve learned that Giancarlo Stanton swings hard, Luis Arraez swings quickly, and Juan Soto is a god who walks among us unbound by the irksome laws of physics and physiology. We’ve learned that Jose Altuve really does have the swing of a man twice his size, and that Oneil Cruz has the swing of a slightly less enormous man. Mostly, though, we’ve learned when and where batters swing their hardest. This is my fourth article about bat tracking data, and in gathering data for the previous three, I constantly found myself stuck in one particular part of the process: controlling for variables.
As baseball knowledge has advanced from the time of Henry Chadwick to the time of Tom Tango, we first found better, more descriptive ways to measure results. We went from caring about batting average to caring about OPS. We found better ways to weight the smaller results that add up to big ones, going from ERA to FIP and from OPS to wRC+. Then we got into the process behind those results. We moved to chase rates and whiff rates, and the ratio of fly balls to groundballs. With the advent of Statcast, we’ve been able to get deeper than ever into process. We can look at the physical characteristics of a pitch, just a single pitch, and model how well it will perform. Within a certain sample size, we can look at a rookie’s hardest-hit ball, just that one ball, and predict his future wRC+ more accurately than if we looked at the wRC+ from his entire rookie season.
Similarly, when I looked at average swing speed and exit velocity from the first week of bat tracking, I found that swing speed was more predictive of future exit velocity. Exit velocity is the result of several processes: You can’t hit the ball hard unless you swing hard and square the ball up, and you can’t square the ball up if you pick terrible pitches to hit. Between 2015 and 2023, our database lists 511 qualified batters. I measured the correlation between their average exit velocity and their wRC+ over that period. R = .63 and R-squared = .40. But because bat tracking takes us one more step away from results and toward process, it’s further divorced from overall success at the plate. The day after bat speed data was first released, Ben Clemens ran some correlation coefficients between some overall metrics of success. He found a correlation of .11 between average swing speed and wRC+. Now that we have more data, I re-ran the numbers and found that correlation has increased to .25. That’s a big difference, but over the same period, the correlation between wRC+ and average exit velocity is .47.
If you want to know how hard a batter is swinging, you’ll find that it’s dependent on the count, the type of pitch, the velocity of the pitch, the location of the pitch, the depth of contact, and whether contact takes place at all. As a result, if you want to measure any one factor’s effect on swing speed, you need to control for so, so many others. The more I’ve sorted through the data, the more I’ve come to appreciate the old adage that pitchers control the action. Bat tracking shows us just how right people are when they say that hitting is reactive. It shows us that different pitches essentially require different swings.
When Tess Taruskin started putting together her Visual Scouting Primer series, she asked around for scouting terms and concepts that people had a hard time picturing. Barrel variability was at the top of my list. I know that Eric Longenhagen is giving a glowing compliment when he says that a player can move his barrel all around the zone, but I’ve always had trouble picturing that. Maybe it’s because of the way I played the game when I was younger, but I’ve never really understood the concept of a grooved swing. When I was digging through the bat tracking data, seeing the effect of the pitch type, the location, and where in space the batter has to get the barrel in order to make solid contact, it finally clicked.
There’s obviously a reason that every hitter has a book, a certain way that pitchers try to get them out. I’m just not sure I ever connected it quite so clearly to the physical act of swinging, the flexibility, quickness, strength, and overall athleticism required to execute a competitive swing on different kinds of pitches in different locations. And that’s before we even get to the processing speed, judgment, and reaction time that comes with recognizing the pitch and deciding not just whether to swing, but how to attack the ball. Bat tracking highlights the how.
There are a million ways to succeed at the plate. Derek Jeter used an inside-out swing to send the ball the other way. Isaac Paredes uses an inside-even-further-inside swing, reaching out and hooking everything he can down the line. Chas McCormick and Austin Riley time their swings in order to drive a fastball to the right field gap and pull anything slower toward left. Arraez, like Tony Gwynn before him, stays back and places the ball in the exact spot that he feels like placing it. Ted Williams preached a slightly elevated swing, making him the progenitor of today’s Doug Latta disciples, who try to get on plane with the ball early and meet it out front, where their bat is on an upward trajectory. Some players talk about trying to hit the bottom of the ball in order to create backspin and carry. I could go on and on. But no matter what school of thought batters subscribe to, they’re not the ones who decide what kind of pitch is coming. Bat tracking data show us just how adaptable their swing has to be. Here’s a map of the 13 gameday zones, broken down by the average speed of competitive swings in each zone for right-handed batters.
The batter can bend at the waist and drop his bat head on a low pitch, especially inside. A high pitch requires a flatter swing, and it’s much more about pure rotational speed. An outside pitch requires hitting the ball deeper, where the bat might not have reached full speed yet, but it also allows the batter to get his arms extended. I just described three different skills, and there are plenty more that we could dive into. Because every batter is an individual, each will be better or worse at some of them than others.
At the moment when all this clicked, I thought of Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani hits plenty of balls that are very obviously gone from the second he makes contact. But he also hits some of the most awkward home runs imaginable, swings that end up with his body contorted in some weird way that makes it seem impossible that he managed to hit the ball hard. He looks like he’s stepping in the bucket and spinning off the ball, he looks like he’s simply throwing out his bat to foul off an outside pitch, or he looks like he’s just not swinging very hard, and yet the ball ends up over the fence. Somehow this ball left the bat at 106.4 mph and traveled 406 feet.
It might appear that this swing was all upper body. However, a swing is a little bit like cracking a whip, where you’re working from the bottom up to send all of the energy to the very end of the line. Some hitters are better than others at manipulating their bodies to time that energy transfer perfectly. Here’s another way of looking at this.
On the left are the 26 homers that Cody Bellinger hit in 2023. On the right are Ohtani’s 44 homers. I realize that because Ohtani hit 18 more, his chart looks more robust. But it’s not just about the number of dots. It’s about the spread. I’m not trying to pick on Bellinger. I used him in part because he had a great season. I found his pitch chart by searching for players with the highest percentage of home runs in the very middle of the strike zone. At 46%, Bellinger had the highest rate of anyone who hit 20 home runs. If you make a mistake in the middle of the zone, he’ll destroy it. On the other hand, Ohtani is capable of hitting the ball hard just about anywhere. It’s even clearer if you look at the two players’ heat maps on hard-hit balls from last season.
Bellinger has never been the same player since his 2019 MVP campaign, and it’s generally assumed that the significant injuries that followed affected his swing. He can still do major damage, but on a smaller subset of pitches. This is one of the reasons that scouts focus so much on flexibility and athleticism and take the time to describe the swings of prospects as grooved or adaptable, long or short, rotational or not, top-hand or bottom-hand dominant. These things may not matter much in batting practice, but if there’s any kind of pitch you can’t handle, the game will find it. The best hitters find a way to get off not just their A-swing, but a swing that can succeed against whatever pitch is heading toward them.
Things aren’t particularly bright in Anaheim right now, but even amidst the Angels’ struggles, some of the team’s young players are thriving. One of those players is Zach Neto, who in his sophomore campaign looks like an improved version of himself at the plate. His full-season wRC+ is up to 107, a mark that has been propelled by continued improvement as temperatures have gotten warmer. In the first month of the season, Neto posted a meager 79 wRC+, but in the two that have followed, he has looked like an All-Star, with a 130 wRC+ in May and a 123 so far in June. Despite not having big raw power, he’s been able to consistently drive the ball.
Last year, Neto was abysmal in the top third of the strike zone. He simply couldn’t handle high heaters, with his .194 wOBA in that area of the zone in the bottom decile of the league. It’s a hole that is too easy to expose. Any pitcher with a decent four-seamer that features at least average ride could live there when facing Neto and not be worried the shortstop would do any damage. It was a problem that held back his entire offensive profile, and without mitigating it, his prospects as a hitter weren’t promising. But as struggling young players often do, Neto looked to make a change. Read the rest of this entry »
These are the saddest of possible words,
Bryant to Báez to Rizzo.
Seeing projected WAR cut into thirds,
Bryant to Báez to Rizzo.
Quickly declining in other team’s hats,
by plate discipline or by powerless bats,
concussions and sore backs turn comebacks to splats,
Bryant to Báez to Rizzo.
The 2016 season was one of the greatest in the history of the Chicago Cubs, a franchise that dates back to 1870, before the National League even existed. After winning the World Series and ending a championship drought that dated back to 1908, there were a lot of reasons to think this team would continue to make deep playoff runs for another five or six years. Sure, they had a fairly old starting rotation, with only Kyle Hendricks expected to stick around for a while, but the lineup looked like it was equipped for a long stretch of dominance. Addison Russell was 22, Javier Báez and Kyle Schwarber were each 23, Kris Bryant, Jorge Soler, and Willson Contreras were all 24, and Anthony Rizzo was still just 26. The team’s big free agent signing from the previous winter, Jason Heyward, didn’t have a good first season in Chicago, but at 26, a bounce-back campaign wasn’t out of the question. Still, this version of the Chicago Cubs would turn out to only have four postseason wins and a single playoff series win (the 2017 NLDS) left in them. What’s more, the three brightest stars in that constellation, Bryant, Báez, and Rizzo, were all traded at the 2021 deadline ahead of reaching free agency. Now, years later, each faces a very uncertain future. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) this week. I’m not sure if this is by design or simply a scheduling coincidence, but this week was full of compelling matchups between current rivals. The Cubs and Cardinals squared off. So did the Yankees and Orioles. The Guardians and Mariners aren’t exactly rivals, but their series rocked too, and I’m sad I couldn’t find a way to squeeze them in this week. That said, there’s a ton to talk about, so let’s get to it, after our usual nod to Zach Lowe of ESPN, who is surely enjoying a well-deserved vacation after the conclusion of the NBA season. To baseball! Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
Instead, Marte was suspended 80 games after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug. McLain underwent shoulder surgery and is expected to miss the vast majority — if not the entirety — of the season. Encarnacion-Strand could meet the same fate after fracturing his wrist after an anemic 37 wRC+ through his first 123 plate appearances. Williamson is on the IL with a strained shoulder that could keep him off the mound for the whole season without throwing a single pitch in the majors. Ashcraft is in Triple-A after posting a 5.05 ERA across 12 starts this season. Bullpen stalwarts Ian Gibaut, Emilio Pagán, and Tejay Antone are all on the IL. All this misfortune has added up to a 35-39 record that has the Reds in the basement of the NL Central.
It hasn’t been all bad, of course. Cincinnati posted a winning record through April, and is 10-7 since the start of June, a stretch that includes a seven-game winning streak from June 2-8. It’s a promising turnaround after the team’s brutal 9-18 May. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh, Rany Jazayerli, and Neil Paine discuss the death of Willie Mays, Mays as the last legendary link to an earlier era, the statistical cases for Mays as the greatest all-around player and greatest player, period in major league history, and (36:45) baseball’s new greatest living player, plus (46:02) banter about Kansas courting the Royals with public funding and (50:38) the competitive trajectories of the Royals and Mets. Then (1:01:08) Ben brings on frequent Stat Blast correspondent Ryan Nelson for Blasts about teams that hover near .500, pitchers replacing same-surnamed pitchers, prolific umpire-player ejection combos, the most players with the same first name in the same game, and Alex Verdugo’s grounders.
Willie Mays was the gold standard. We can debate whether he was the greatest baseball player who ever lived or merely on the short list of those with a claim to the title. Based upon both the legend and the statistics, we’re on more solid ground declaring that Mays was the game’s greatest all-around player, accounting for his skill and achievement at the plate, on the bases, and in the field. Combining tremendous power, exceptional speed that factored on both sides of the ball, and preternatural grace afield, the man could do it all on the diamond, and he did it with an endearing, charismatic flair. “The Say Hey Kid” — a nickname bestowed upon him when he was so fresh on the scene that he didn’t know his teammates’ names — projected a youthful exuberance and an innocence that made him an icon.
Mays began his professional career while still in high school, with the Birmingham Black Barons, signing a $250-a-month contract in July 1948, when he was just 17 years old. He was supposed to return to Birmingham this week, one of three Negro Leagues alumni from the 1920-48 period — along with Bill Greason and Ron Teasley — slated to attend a major league game tonight between the Cardinals and Giants at historic Rickwood Field, the country’s oldest professional ballpark. Sadly, Mays passed away two days ago, in an assisted living facility, at the age of 93.
Willie Mays gave this statement to Dusty Baker on Monday, a day before Willie passed, to share with the city of Birmingham: pic.twitter.com/hQ0XmRKsmc
Mays was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979. At the time of his death, he was its oldest living member, a distinction he inherited when Tommy Lasordadied on January 7, 2021, and one that now belongs to 90-year-old Luis Aparicio. Read the rest of this entry »
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